Tag Archives: North Carolina

Raleigh, N.C. – New rankings of average teacher pay across all 50 states and the District of Columbia show that North Carolina teacher pay is increasing faster than any other state in the country.

Data from the National Education Association shows that North Carolina has moved up six spots in the rankings of average teacher salaries since the 2013-2014 school year, the single-biggest improvement of any state in the country. North Carolina has also seen the largest average gains in teacher pay in the country over that same time period, according to the data.

During the 2015-2016 school year, North Carolina’s average teacher salary of $47,985 ranked 41st in the nation. When the data is adjusted for cost-of-living, North Carolina ranks 33rd in the nation for teacher pay, according to preliminary analysis by the John Locke Foundation.

In both cases, the individual in question could be the coolest, most intelligent and compassionate guy you would ever wanna meet. But when first met, in the restroom, or in the bar, on the street or in the elevator, the level of suspicion will be elevated and the level of societal trust will be less than it otherwise would have been had the person signaled or presented in a more mainstream manner.

I don’t think that this is surprising or even controversial. In fact, I suspect that societies signal mainstream as a means of survival and cohesion.

All of which is a very long way of saying that when people wear a hoodie, in certain and specific contexts, they are presenting or signalling in a more suspicious manner than they otherwise might have.

Goldsboro, N.C. — A 20-year-old man wanted in connection with the Monday morning shooting death of a longtime employee at Wayne Community College was taken into custody early Tuesday in Florida, according to the Goldsboro Police Department.

This guy, pure and simple, presents as an asshole and looks like a criminal.

RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina’s unemployment rate continued improving in January to near the national average, falling to 6.7 percent, the state Commerce Department reported Monday.

The report was the latest to contain mixed messages about how well the state’s economy was shaping up for workers and why. While the report found the number of people employed increased by 17,407 between December and January, another survey found nonfarm payrolls recorded 7,200 fewer jobs.

While like to see the unemployment rate go down, we need to acknowledge that we are fighting serious headwinds as related to that number going down due to discouraged workers leaving the job market. But there might be reason for a positive outlook there too:

The release of the January data was delayed by about a month as researchers revised and updated previous information, an annual process. The results of the revision indicate that the steady drop in North Carolina’s unemployment rate had less to do than previously thought with discouraged workers quitting their struggle to find jobs and no longer being counted, Brod said.

North Carolina Cuts Unemployment Benefits

By itself, the news is good news, heck, even GREAT news. But it rarely is “by itself”:

Economists say the fast drop in the unemployment rate could be because so many people have become discouraged, are giving up on finding a job and are no longer being counted.

The state’s population of working-age adults who are looking for jobs shrank by 111,000 in 2013.

This is, of course, the same phenomenon that nation republicans use to knock Obama. There the big story is that the national labor force participation rate has plummeted to lows that we haven’t seen in decades.

While the unemployment rate in North Carolina is dropping, there is significant reason to believe that this is due to folks dropping out of the labor force.

Governor McCrory Interview

While the drop in the unemployment rate is largely due to a reduction of folks in the labor force, Governor McCrory has an answer:

While I agree that the rate is subject to the numbers in the work force, the fact that the work force is dropping nationally is important. I’ll have to go back and dig through the state numbers, but if the labor force participation rate loss didn’t change as a result of the end of benefits, you can’t blame the law.

UI isn’t meant to be a social welfare program – in theory it’s INSURANCE that is meant to carry over an individual for a discreet amount of time.

North Carolina Democrats Fire Executive Director

They like to say that elections have consequences – and here in North Carolina, Obama in 2008 delivered the republicans in 2010. And THAT meant the republicans redrew districts that the democrats had gerrymandered for better than 100 years.

The result? Republican majorities in the senate and the house with a republican governor.

Dempsey might not be perfect, but he’s the best thing that’s happened to the party since Voller became chair. (I know, I know. That’s not saying much.) Voller’s first months were marked by incompetence and embarrassing revelations. Dempsey began putting the house in order and people began taking North Carolina Democrats seriously again.

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It was apparently too much for Voller. He needed to reestablish him self as buffoon-in-chief, since, you know, bad news is better than no news. At a time when Democrats should be rallying around their impressive candidates as the filing period opens, they’re focusing on more drama at the Goodwin House. The timing couldn’t be much worse.

Raleigh, N.C. — Voters in North Carolina will not have to show photo identification at the polls until 2016, but the state Division of Motor Vehicles began issuing free photo ID cards Thursday to those who don’t have other forms of identification.

MINNEAPOLIS — A member of the Minnesota National Guard and self-described commander of a militia group was charged Wednesday with stealing names, Social Security numbers and security clearance levels of roughly 400 members of his former Army unit in Fort Bragg, N.C., so he could make fake IDs for his militia members.

According to a federal complaint and affidavit obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, Keith Michael Novak, 25, of Maplewood, threatened to use violence if authorities came to arrest him.

“I’ve my AK in my bed. If I hear that door kick, it’s going boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I’m just going to start putting them through the (expletive) wall,” he told an undercover FBI employee in July, according to the affidavit unsealed Wednesday.

Novak was charged with committing fraud in connection with identification documents. He was in federal custody Wednesday and unavailable for comment. His father has an unlisted number, and attempts to reach him were unsuccessful. The federal defender’s office has the case, but an attorney had not been selected to represent him by Wednesday evening.

Such a tortured life this man must lead.

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Goldsboro, N.C. — A U.S. hydrogen bomb nearly detonated on the nation’s east coast, with a single switch averting a blast which would have been 260 times more powerful than the device that flattened Hiroshima, a newly published book says.

In a recently declassified document, reported in a new book by Eric Schlosser, the supervisor of the nuclear weapons safety department at Sandia national laboratories said that one simple, vulnerable switch prevented nuclear catastrophe.

Two hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro on Jan. 24, 1961, after a B-52 bomber broke up in flight. One of the bombs apparently acted as if it was being armed and fired — its parachute opened and trigger mechanisms engaged.

Parker F. Jones at the Sandia National Laboratories analyzed the accident in a document headed “How I learned to mistrust the H-Bomb.”

“The MK39 Mod 2 bomb did not possess adequate safety for the airborne-alert role in the B-52,” he wrote. When the B-52 disintegrates in the air it is likely to release the bombs in “a near normal fashion,” he wrote, calling the safety mechanisms to prevent accidental arming “not complex enough.”

The document said the bomb had four safety mechanisms, one of which is not effective in the air. When the aircraft broke up, two others were rendered ineffective.

“What prevented the detonation was one switch, one safety switch, and a fair amount of good luck, because that safety switch was later found, in some cases. to be defective,” Schlosser told CBS News.

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For the first time since the Civil War, republicans were in charge of drawing voting districts in North Carolina. And in a move that should have surprised no one, they redrew those lines in a different manner than had democrats.

And in a response that also surprised no one, democrats, voting rights groups and the NAACP sued.

Raleigh, N.C. — A three-judge panel on Monday upheld legislative and congressional districts drawn by the Republican-dominated General Assembly in 2011, ruling unanimously that the maps were constitutional.

Democrats, the state NAACP and good-government groups had sued to invalidate the maps, saying they were improperly drawn based on racial considerations. The opponents also argued lawmakers too finely split the state, dividing so many local voting precincts that it would create confusion.

But the three Superior Court judges found that those challenging the maps had not showed “a violation of any cognizable equal protection rights of any North Carolina citizens, or groups thereof, will result.”

Frankly, I’m tired of the constant race bating that is pitched whenever issues like this arise. To think that only republicans are guilty of selfishly drawing district line is ignorant. And to think that republicans are doing it to repress some minority is insulting.

I mean, it’s not like the map hadn’t already reviewed, by the now insulting VRA stipulation:

But in 2010, Republicans controlled both the House and Senate and, therefore, redistricting legislation. Former Gov. Bev Perdue, a Democrat who left office in early 2013, had no say in how the districts were drawn because state law does not give the governor veto authority over redistricting plans.

Republicans leveraged those favorable districts to win super-majorities of both the state House and Senate, as well as capture nine of the state’s U.S. House seats.

After the maps cleared the General Assembly, they were reviewed and “pre-cleared” by the U.S. Justice Department under a procedure laid out by the federal Voting Rights Act. The U.S. Justice Department, whose leadership was appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama, found the maps did not hurt the ability of minorities to elect candidates of their choice.

In fact, Republican lawmakers frequently cited their need to comply with voting rights law as a reason to create legislative districts that contained high concentrations of minority voters. Plaintiffs challenging the districts said lawmakers were trying to illegally “pack” minority voters into a few districts, diluting their overall influence.

The map was pre-cleared by the US Justice department. Not an organization that is exactly in favor of fairly enforcing republican themes.